Make Your Own Lane: Live Feedback On Due Diligence Before Order Acceptance

I have picked up some real time projects and tweaked the language a bit however kept the essence of the brief intact. That should go well for the learning part.

Sample 1

My business plan is ready. I just need someone to check the finance part, correct and do necessary changes. The financial plan should include forecast for one year at least, cash flow, balance sheet or profit and loss statement, project profits in the first 6 months. Also require

1] Break-even point

2] How financial tools will be used to monitory financial performance

3] Contingency plan confirming resources to meet the cost of finances

4] Emergency plan

Need within 10 hours

Budget $10

To Bid or Not To Bid

The client’s business plan may be ready however he is not ready for business yet. You can spot an amateur miles away in the startup eco system.

After the business model, the widest gap between idea and business; execution and revenue; startup and take off is the financial planning part. It takes ages, extensive brain storming, elaborate research. It is not just some numbers in an excel sheet. This client thinks it is just that. 10 hours hints at that. No wonder he thinks, this is just a tenner piece of work.

The pricing model is the breaking and making point of any business. That determines if you will stay in the business or just be washed out. It is not filling a template and making lofty claims about quick profitability – It is transfer of conviction from business owner to every reader who set their eyes on that plan.

I leave it to your judgment and final call if you want to bid or educate this client – If you are invited/ contacted to bid, when you refuse state reasons. Never lose one opportunity to enlighten someone with a piece of information that you think, he definitely must know. You will be thanked profusely soon for that.

Sample 2

I have a 20 page PDF. It is from a company I worked for in the past. A friend is still working there and shared the recent pitch deck. I love the visuals and the story.

I am looking for someone who need not begin from scratch but just replicate this, use my name deleting existing document contact, some minor changes in work, new photo graphs, play with the sequence

To Bid or Not To Bid

Read between the lines.

This is unethical. Period

Enough Said.

It would be a very different story, if the project brief was like this.

I have a 20 page PDF. My friend presented the pitch deck. I love the visuals and the story and want to use for my client.

I am looking for someone to just replicate this, use my name deleting my friends, some minor changes in work, new photographs play with the sequence to make it relevant while I work on financial slides.

Ask clarification questions if there is any compromise on intellectual property. 

You are most likely to be told that they belong to the same company, and their leader asked them to outsource the standard deck part while the resource who posted the project brief is personally working on the commercial part.

Again it is your call.

So before you accept order, see what you are getting into. Are you risking your reputation being associated with the wrong kind of project unknowingly or deliberately?

Either educate client when your refuse order or educate yourself about the objective of each task when you accept an order.

Write to advocating.outcomes@gmail.com if you have any client interaction that you are not sure of, if you should proceed with the execution or just decline the order due to a shady aspect in the project.